In 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) mobile networks, e.g., using the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) radio access technology or the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio access technology, intermediate transport networks may be used to convey data between different nodes of the mobile network, in particular between nodes of a Radio Access Network (RAN).
Such an intermediate transport network may be a potential bottleneck with respect to data traffic to or from a user equipment (UE). For example, when transmitting downlink (DL) data traffic to a UE, a congestion may occur in the transport network and slow down or even completely block the DL traffic to the UE. Also, if the RAN is limited by a transport network bottleneck, fairness among different UEs may become an issue because some one UE may be affected by the congestion more severely than another.
Further, problems may also arise when different radio access technologies coexist in the mobile network. In such cases, for example an UMTS base station, also referred to as “Node B” (NB) may share the same transport network with an LTE base station, also referred to as “evolved Node B” (eNB). In this case, different mechanisms for congestion handling may be applied by the different radio access technologies, which may cause problems concerning fairness among the different radio access technologies.
Accordingly, there is a need for techniques which allow for efficient handling of congestions which may occur in a transport network used for transmitting data packets to a base station of a mobile network.